We have made a few different turkeys this season. They were fun and cute and a lot are easy enough that you could even do them on Turkey Day to keep the little ones occupied while you are cooking or the grown ups are visiting.

Coffee Filter Turkeys

I think that these turkeys came out so cute. It was a different take on the coffee filter flowers using liquid water color. We also used scented pine cones to spice up the place.

Using our sensory table so it didn’t make too big a mess, I gave the girls little cups of the water colors and plastic pippettes to drop the paint onto the coffee filters. If you haven’t made the flowers before it makes a tie-dye type design once it dries. You could also just color the filters with markers and then spray them with water to create a similar effect. We went with the droppers and water color to make what the girls called “a science craft.”

We then crumbled the filters up into flower shapes and glued them onto the base of the pine cone to make the puffy tail feathers. Older children could do the folding and stuffing themselves and probably wouldn’t even need to glue in the “feathers.” Since I have little ones that like to play with their crafts, I did the stuffing and hot glued in the pieces.

Then we added the head pieces. I have included the image of the template I used so you could just download that and size it to your needs if you don’t want to draw your own, but really it’s pretty easy to freehand. You could also do something different for the head such as use a pom pom or a small pine cone piece. We didn’t have any natural pieces to use and the pom pom balls I had just didn’t look right with the color of our tail so we went for a paper head. And the girls chose the googly eyes because “everything is better with googly eyes.”

Spray Paint Turkeys

These make great wall hangings to decorate the house for the big day. And the graffiti style makes this good for a wide variety of ages. Little ones can work on their hand muscles spraying the paint and older ones can play with the spray functions to create different designs.

Supplies: liquid water color, spray bottles, paper, tape

We used the liquid water color for these turkeys as well. I drew the turkey feather piece on thick paper (we just use a roll from Michaels) and then cut out multiple copies. I taped up all the feathers on our wall in the backyard.

Then I gave the girls spray bottles filled with liquid water colors–one bottle per color. The girls had a great time spraying down the feather pieces.

After they dried we glued on the turkey pieces. I cut out beaks and waddles ahead of time for the girls to add along with googly eyes.

Fancy Turkeys

I love crafts like these where we just put out a bunch of different supplies and the girls go wild. It really is just a turkey and whatever craft supplies you have on hand. The girls had the idea to turn these decorations into puppets and added the craft stick handles.

I used the cricut to cut out the turkeys out of cardstock (Cricut Lite, Celebrate with Flourish) but you could just as trace their hands or use a template online (there are tons of them). We didn’t do the traditional hand turkeys for this one since the girls’ hands are still so little (there would be very little space to decorate).

Placemats

Who hasn’t made a woven paper placemat for Thanksgiving? This went great with our practicing patterns. In addition to the placemat, we’ve done our pattern file folder game and made bead necklaces. But really I included this in the post because I think it’s easy to think that projects need to be super creative, complicated, and unique but all those projects you loved as a child are new and fun to your little ones. So don’t forget about them! Make a hand turkey. Weave a placemat. Have fun!

Who Am I?

I think this is where I'm suppose to say something witty about myself. Oh well. I'm a stay-at-home mom to three awesome kids--our twin daughters who are seven now and a two-year-old son who is full of energy. In my pre-children life I was a teacher and I now homeschool our children. I'm also married to Ed, who is currently serving in the Air Force, and is the love of my life (it'd be awkward if he wasn't). Our family is big on books, crafts, and having fun together. I just thought I would share our activities in my own little corner of the internet.

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